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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 5, 2022 23:57:37 GMT
Mick Trouble - Oddities and Sodsities (2022) - 7 / 10
He's had a special album under that name ^ this year, and under his real name Jed Smith for The Jeanines who made a kind of brief diary classic in 2022 - in a genre that I don't give af about at all (fey minimalist Pop) ........and now a very goofy B-sides 5 song EP that includes a Magnetic Fields cover.
As always, he's parodying either 60s Pop or 70s light New Wave with detached irony ......and he's a funny duck......some great wit - even in song titles - including "Glad I'm Not Me" and "Bleating Child".
Full EP:
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 7, 2022 6:28:51 GMT
Radio Birdman - Radios Appear (Trafalgar Edition) - (1977) - 9 / 10
Most people don't listen to this record - their 10 song debut - since there's a compilation that takes most of the great songs here but when you play this edition now - it's quite a revelation - both of its time and outside it.
One of the great Australian albums - just under The Saints Eternally Yours - but also one of the few great albums that starts with a cover (Iggy's TV Eye) and that sounds more classic rock than punk but more punk in some ways than anything else - they're attitude was .......and still is....something.
In this form it's a cohesive set........and this album has this full song with its incrementally logical, wild ending not the single edit of that compilation - just sayin'
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Post by themoviesinner on Aug 8, 2022 17:52:56 GMT
Elvenking - Secrets of the Magick Grimoire (2017) -- 9.5/10Another great album from Elvenking, probably their second best behind The Winter Wake and a fantastic mix of folk and power metal, like only they can do. I've been listening to this non-stop for a couple of days now. Absolutely fantastic album.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 12, 2022 17:52:42 GMT
Kiwi Jr. - Chopper - (released today - August 12, 2022) - ~ just under an 8 / 10
How terrific has 2022 been?
"Indie Rock" was a marvelous genre - when Husker Du played it (um) - that is often ponderous, joyless and tiresome to me - but this year not only did we get an important, invigorating debut album from Horsegirl - we also get the even better - and entirely different - Chopper
Kiwi Jr.'s previous 2 records were almost as good as this but defined by a few songs each .... but now the band seem more even-keeled - it's an album, not a collection of songs and it's loose, focused and tight.
Their bookish intellect is edited down in a more consistently palatable way...... this is a very easy album to listen to. It's also cleverly sequenced - starting with a song that eases you into it, and ending with a great song the stretches them out in a deceptively ambitious way (The Masked Singer)
Just 10 songs - and a stretch in style with synths meshing with guitar or at times replacing them. They don't lose the plot - and plot is the key word because a lot of this references movies - one song is called Parasite II, but there's also The Sound of Music - and while bands singing about movies too much can signal laziness - to them it's freeing while giving them song structures to hang onto.....
Dan Boeckner (Divine Fits, Wolf Parade) produced - and his vision for this album is noticeably inspired - he gives a lot of attention to sounds, space, clutter and feel - he shapes it.
For all the references to soundscapes and poppines (yes, The Cure, The Cars, The Strokes around their Electricityscape style)............. I would actually say some of this references stuff not nearly as major as that - some of this is like kitsch /cheesy - but taken seriously Flock of Seagull's great single "Wishing", or Howard Jones or Thompson Twins...it's an ingenuous record in several ways that's about patterns - replicable patterns - in songs and in movies - and in life - and in soundtracks in your head ...........to movies you are writing in the moment and starring in.
This is the first time Kiwi Jr. have made a record that Pavement didn't already make better 20+ years ago....that's growth.....it will be interesting to see if this is a new direction or a one-off.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 16, 2022 7:48:16 GMT
More Kicks - More Kicks (2019) - ~ 6.5 / 10
Before they dropped the incredible single "Animal" (2022) - James Sullivan's band had the right idea but only sometimes delivered on it.
But More Kicks get a free pass on what came before "Animal" anyway - as recently as 2021 Amyl & The Sniffers went from pretty good to pretty awesome on album #2.......and Sullivan could drop a great song & lyric right from the start too:
"Maybe shattered hopes aren't worth the wait at all / maybe drunken arguments........ they mean much more"
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 17, 2022 16:27:28 GMT
Matt Speedway (Matt Julian) - Five (2022) - ~ 7 / 10
Pop genius leader of the mighty The Speedways who used to curate his writings for that band like he was Daniel Day Lewis choosing a part now releases everything like he's Robert Pollard fulfilling a contract obligation (The Speedways however remain ruthlessly tight editors of their own work). This is his 5th five song EP (hence the name) this year ........and his band have a more substantial (hopefully) new album coming in November. They've already released the typically awesome double A side single for that one (Shoulda Known / A Drop In The Ocean) - so this is just a time filler treat until then. These 5 "songs" (more like sketches) are all around 1 minute long - and they are pleasant throwaways - mostly ballads - quite hummable - all done in 1 take........hmmmmmm. Full bandcamp link below the photo...... mattspeedway.bandcamp.com/album/five
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 22, 2022 7:14:53 GMT
Sugar - Beaster EP (1993) - 9 / 10 You could make an argument that Bob Mould's Sugar in 92 / 93 anyway - with their debut and this 6 song EP - were the best Rock band in the world and Pavement and Nirvana were around then too.
There are only a handful of "necessary to own in their entirety" EPs in Rock history imo - Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch, REM Chronic Town, Mission of Burma Signals Calls and Marches, The Nerves ........a few others here and there........but none will induce hearing loss like this will.......or possibly induce a seizure..........recorded loudly under a production with everything pushed to a noisy, treble heavy blur - it's Copper Blue's smaller, more evil twin......
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Post by themoviesinner on Aug 23, 2022 9:51:18 GMT
Listened to two 90s rock albums: Pavement - Slanted And Enchanted (1992) -- 7/10Pretty cool. It does suffer from some of the problems I have with this subgenre of rock, mainly that most of the songs sound similar and there's little variation, but it's great musically and I really liked it's raw quality and dry sense of humor. The vocals are also pretty fantastic and give the album a unique vibe. The only real downside is it's low-fi production, which just strips the music from some of it's energy. Caspar Brotzmann Massaker - Koksofen (1993) -- 8/10Really interesting blend of post-rock and industrial/dark ambient. Definitely a unique and absorbing listen. Some of the tracks could have been trimmed a little, but the soundscapes this album creates are quite immense.
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Deceit
Full Member
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Post by Deceit on Aug 23, 2022 17:58:39 GMT
both fantastic albums! That's one of my favorite Caspar Brotzmann Albums; if you get a chance to listen to more of his stuff id recommend the album the Tribe and Black Axis, though there are only five albums from that group, so they're all worth listening to at least once
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 3, 2022 3:00:53 GMT
3 Short takes -
The Strokes - The New Abnormal (2020)- ~ 7 / 10 .....some great stuff, some crap ......sometimes in the same song .........the longer songs torpedo this from being fully realized but they've made 2 classics - and flirted with another on Angles - and all 6 albums are worth listening to.........and that's all you can ask of a band 20 years into their run
Holly and The Italians - The Right To Be Italian (1981) - 7.5 ++ or an 8 / 10 - I reviewed this before but can't find it - though I don't think it was this 14 song version which is better with 4 add ons......a lot of people love this album and the Holly in the title - Holly Beth Vincent. She's great and the record sometimes is......the too slick sound especially on slower songs or slower parts of songs hold this back.......stiil it's pretty lovable.....
Tame Impala - Currents (2015) - slightly above a 6 / 10 - Pleasant aural wallpaper with that annoying af falsetto - I don't get it - but in particular, this record ........there is nothing cool about this music .....it's fine........shrug
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 9, 2022 10:57:02 GMT
The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness - The Third Wave Of .... (2022) - 7 / 10
What's missing is something dark - the way that the big guns in this genre have suggested will be on their albums through the singles - More Kicks (album next week) and The Speedways (album in November) .......but for listenable jangle pop - this is as good as it's gotten so far this year - which so far has found the "great" albums in other genres : Post-Punk (Fontaines D.C.), Indie-Pop (Wet Leg), Retro New Wave (Kate Clover) and er, um, "Country" - for lack of a better word (CMAT).
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Post by Martin Stett on Sept 13, 2022 16:01:03 GMT
Gulp! (1985) - Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota
Come for Willy Crook on saxophone, stay for new-wave cool. I don't listen to much like this, but I had fun on Gulp. Don't really have anything to say about it, once again (the curse of musical illiteracy). I think some of you may not be familiar with the band, as every comment on Youtube is in Spanish, but you guys may dig it. I'm gonna say 6.5/10
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 13, 2022 17:22:44 GMT
Hayley and The Crushers - Modern Adult Kicks (2022) - 4 /10
Yeah, yeah, yeah - I know all the jokes........... How can pacinoyes hate all my favorite bands when Pitchfork loves them (come on), how can he hate my favorite songs when they were huge hits (well that's a start isn't it?) ..........Why, I bet he'd like anything that's amateurishly played and obscure........and now you've gone too far.
I rated this fairly acclaimed band's debut last February a 5.5 in this thread........it was lame but I was being nice and got a good haircut recently
But now I'm a year and a half Closer To Death, this is worse than their other album - and this is longer too - also, I'm hungry.......... oh and it's amateurish - not in a cool way but in a "I don't know how to write songs" way ........
Avoid at all costs
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 14, 2022 7:18:50 GMT
Colleen Green / Beat Awfuls - 4 song Split EP (2022) - 7 / 102 songs from each artist - and Colleen Green's 2 new songs are the reason to get excited - College Rock (bandcamp link below) the best one here - which sounds exactly like her (excellent) "Cool" (2021) album - a record of Dadaist wtf-ery that I've talked about a lot as being wildly misunderstood and dismissed wrongly by some (it was my number 6 best album last year). Green plays all instruments herself - even the ones she can't really play (um) - but she outfoxes her limitations (those drums sound booming!) and she is so charmingly, winningly DIY - to a fault even - she makes these little castles out of cotton candy and pixie sticks.....she's like your clever little imaginary friend because no one would believe this specific artist exists in 2022 at all - she's all fanzines, lo-fi production, hand drawn Art and small informal shows.... Green is like some kind of feminist champ tbh but she'd just laugh and tell me to shut up and to stop using the word Dadaist to describe her pretty songs ffs.... colleengreen.bandcamp.com/
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Post by Martin Stett on Sept 14, 2022 14:12:53 GMT
Master of Puppets (1986) - MetallicaAfter the numbingly repetitive opening number of Battery, I was already in a bad mood. And the sad thing is, every number afterwards sounds exactly the same. Oh, each one may start with a new guitar riff or something to maybe fake out the listener, but then it will just turn into the same, staid metal that they have been doing for the past forty minutes. Lyrically, this *could* have been interesting, but they botch that too. The concept of a series of tales about control and puppeteering is a good one, but the band doesn't portray any understanding of how different systems of control tie into each other. To be honest, it may just be me: I wanted a grand statement about how people crave being controlled, and how the various puppet masters work together to fulfill that need. Instead, we get surface level depictions of "drugs will fuck you up" (the title song) and "boy, big business sure is bad for mental health" ( Damage, Inc.), but nothing that shows any indication that Metallica knows "just how to get what we want" from their puppets. It's a child pointing out that things are bad but without any understanding of why people follow the Leper Messiah or why they sell their souls to Damage, Inc. Lousy stuff. 3/10
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 15, 2022 7:16:07 GMT
Built To Spill - When The Wind Forgets Your Name (2022) - 7 + / 10
Never made a bad record - still haven't.
One of the few American guitar heroes to come out of Indie Rock - Doug Martsch - like Mascis and Mould could always fall back on his playing but his songwriting is good enough that he doesn't have to do that.......though his playing is attention grabbing here anyway - crisp, clean, hypnotic.
You can appreciate it on several levels - as a Pop album, a Rock album, a Psych one or a trippy mix of all of those to get enraptured by......
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 16, 2022 7:26:02 GMT
More Kicks - Punch Drunk (2022) - maybe an 8 / 10 - at its best it's a blast - will have to see how it holds up........(released today - Friday, September 16, 2022)
More Kicks 2nd record is a big step up - much louder and more muscular than their decent but more small time self titled debut (2019).
This mixes 60s Rock, 70s Punk, New Wave, with 80s (and 90s!) Indie and several eras of Power Pop. The 3 terrific previously released singles - (Animal, Terminal Love, Hurts Like Hell) are all up front - and matched by some other standouts "Colour Me Stupefied", "In Love", "Goodnight, Goodnight" and "Come Home".
That's 7 really special tracks out of 12 - but Kate Clover's Bleed Your Heart Out did similar music on a tighter, filler free 10 track album this year ........ the 7 best songs on Punch Drunk are arguably as good as anything on Clover's album but when you play this it doesn't measure up to that level overall.
Still Punch Drunk has some of my favorite music of 2022 on it and 7 songs isn't just 2 or 3 after all. Color Me Stupefied - below - - the first quasi-ballad they've pulled off.
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 22, 2022 7:53:58 GMT
Geoff Palmer - Standing In The Spotlight - A Cover Album of Dee Dee King (Ramone) (2022) - ~ less than 6 / 10 A loving but stupid idea - a cover of Dee Dee Ramone's rap album......nobody wanted this - why not just cover Metallica / Lou Reed's Lulu instead Geoff (um)? - and Palmer may want to stick up for the original Dee Dee Ramone album but it was a bad album ........and this remake of it feels like a stunt.......and it's one of those things that is such an inside joke - it's totally forced. Palmer made a slight but good - mostly covers EP with Lucy Ellis in 2020 ( Your Face Is Weird) with the cover song of the year - and he had my #3 album of 2021 - Charts & Graphs - a real breakthrough - which included an awesome 6 song ending run on it (tracks 5 through 10)......he's been great at times in The Connection and New Trocaderos
He can be inspired .......this isn't however....this is him indulging his every whim and thinking every idea he has is a good one....
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 22, 2022 22:06:26 GMT
The Black Angels - Wilderness of Mirrors (2022) 7.5 / 10
Their first album in 5 years and it is a beast - the only problem is it's too much of one - this album is too long but it has some of their best stuff ever on it.
One monster riff after another and if you've seen them live you know albums are just a warm-up for the awesome noise they can generate.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 27, 2022 9:07:47 GMT
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down (2022) - ~ close to an 8 / 10 (will be released 9/30)
........their back catalog still holds up and some of that sounds even better now than it did then - and it sounded pretty great-ish back then too... Well............album #5 is among their very best and their most ambitious - brimming with intelligence, sex, harsh beauty, deep grooves and best of all - it feels incredibly brief - this ends in about 30 minutes - 8 songs - which gives it a kind of "what's going to happen next" unsettled (and unanswered) vibe.
This record is more sculpted than most excellent Rock albums - usually this kind of thing sounds "cluttered" and the band gets lost - but on Cool It Down it's the opposite - this is very much engineered and produced to achieve a sparse effect - in how instruments and voice are woven together sonically.
Very contemporary sounding, sleek and trance-like with soundscapes of ebb and flow and with just enough moments of danceable rave-ups to make you realize they are still the band you love .......what this record mostly evokes is watching the world burn from afar but hoping something beautiful may grow from the ashes.
Very much a "captures the mood / state of 2022" kind of album but in hard to explain ways.........also the kind you throw adjectives at that seem contradictory but are rather linked: alluring, mysterious, hypnotic, exciting, immediate, visceral ......a "grown-up" record in the best sense of that expression......
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Post by Martin Stett on Sept 28, 2022 15:24:58 GMT
Touched (2007) - NadjaA one hour long buildup to a good death metal song that never arrives. There is nothing to say about this album, because nothing happens. There is no content. It's a practical joke. It isn't real. Is all drone music this pointless? 3/10
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Post by Martin Stett on Sept 30, 2022 15:03:47 GMT
Planets (1981) - Eloy
Prog is one of those things that you either dig or you don't. I mostly enjoy it, and I mostly enjoy this album. It's a lot more spacey and a lot less driven than I personally would like (would it kill you to let loose somewhere in these forty minutes?), but it's pretty cool stuff with the keyboards creating a cool sci-fi vibe. "Vibe" is precisely the word for this album: it's something to cool down with and soak in, but not really listen to deeply.
Lyrically, it's a mixed bag. There is some sort of attempt at an overarching narrative and theme, most obviously exemplified in Point of No Return (posted above), but whatever Eloy is trying to say about people abandoning rational thought and enterprise for fleeting pleasures are lost in the spacey sci-fi mumbo jumbo that takes up most of the album. And that's fine: like I said, this is a "vibe" album. Having anything more to offer than something chill is a bonus. I'm giving this a 6.5/10
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Post by themoviesinner on Sept 30, 2022 15:15:09 GMT
Planets (1981) - EloyProg is one of those things that you either dig or you don't. I mostly enjoy it, and I mostly enjoy this album. It's a lot more spacey and a lot less driven than I personally would like (would it kill you to let loose somewhere in these forty minutes?), but it's pretty cool stuff with the keyboards creating a cool sci-fi vibe. "Vibe" is precisely the word for this album: it's something to cool down with and soak in, but not really listen to deeply. Lyrically, it's a mixed bag. There is some sort of attempt at an overarching narrative and theme, most obviously exemplified in Point of No Return (posted above), but whatever Eloy is trying to say about people abandoning rational thought and enterprise for fleeting pleasures are lost in the spacey sci-fi mumbo jumbo that takes up most of the album. And that's fine: like I said, this is a "vibe" album. Having anything more to offer than something chill is a bonus. I'm giving this a 6.5/10 This is very good, but I think Eloy's best album by far is Ocean (1977). I think Eloy is, generally, underrated as a band. I consider them among the best of the genre.
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Post by Martin Stett on Sept 30, 2022 15:48:59 GMT
This is very good, but I think Eloy's best album by far is Ocean (1977). I think Eloy is, generally, underrated as a band. I consider them among the best of the genre. The only prog album I've ever really connected with is Heterotopia by Schooltree. It rocks hard at times but is also pretty diverse in tone, while being focused in concept and themes. Prog is generally "pleasant" to my ears, but Heterotopia was willing to do more, and that set it above the others for me. The difference between Eloy and that album is that Schooltree is pushing. There's a forward momentum that is missing from Planets that gives Eloy's album a dreamy, but insubstantial feeling. Whereas the almost Broadway style The Big Slide, the rhythmic Dead Girl, or the haunting You and I are all far more propulsive than anything on Planets, and far more diverse sounding (which is also important in keeping things interesting). I'm not terribly familiar with the genre, to be fair. This is based on my impressions more than any real study.
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Post by themoviesinner on Sept 30, 2022 16:09:31 GMT
This is very good, but I think Eloy's best album by far is Ocean (1977). I think Eloy is, generally, underrated as a band. I consider them among the best of the genre. The only prog album I've ever really connected with is Heterotopia by Schooltree. It rocks hard at times but is also pretty diverse in tone, while being focused in concept and themes. Prog is generally "pleasant" to my ears, but Heterotopia was willing to do more, and that set it above the others for me. The difference between Eloy and that album is that Schooltree is pushing. There's a forward momentum that is missing from Planets that gives Eloy's album a dreamy, but insubstantial feeling. Whereas the almost Broadway style The Big Slide, the rhythmic Dead Girl, or the haunting You and I are all far more propulsive than anything on Planets, and far more diverse sounding (which is also important in keeping things interesting). I'm not terribly familiar with the genre, to be fair. This is based on my impressions more than any real study. Heterotopia by Schooltree is also a great prog rock album and definitely more diverse, but, nowdays, bands have, basically, more stuff at their disposal to experiment with, due to the evoluton of music in general (Heterotopia was released in 2017, it's natural to sound more diverse than prog rock albums released 40 years earlier). Basically, prog rock bands of that era operated using a certain template and it all came down to how interesting, or creative their use of that template was. Most prog rock bands of that era probably sound outdated now, but I just love that kind of music.
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